poems by rachel kellum
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Ceci n'est pas un poème
In this kind of gameless happiness,
Words are all Magritte said they were.
In love, forget Platonic essence.
Poet, the mountain needs no prophets;
The prairie already has cows.
Which one am I?
2013
American Gothic Koan
How many cicada midnights
in the history of hotwired pastures
love and basketball
have a black man and a white woman
shot bent hoops with a spilt egg moon
off a Farmall tractor?
2013
To Be Crossed
A small herd
Of red cows gather
To watch me
When I walk away from
Your gentle apology.
Watching them
Watch me cry
The space between us
Is very empty
And clean.
I purely burn
The way yesterday
Morning’s heifer
Bellowed for a white bull
Across the road.
Both kicked dirt
Over their own backs,
Stamped earth,
Threw back
Huge heads.
His rusted barbs,
Her buzzing wire,
Asphalt incomprehensible
To desire,
But there, nonetheless.
2013
Throat's Shadow
Suprasternal notch—
pulsing pool of pores and light
waiting for this tongue.
2013
Constituents
The map was made of west and east.
The net was made of fish.
The step was made of stop and weep.
The meal was made of wish.
The pet was made of no and yes.
The nest was made of new.
The sap was made of me and mess.
The pew was made of you.
2013
a poem made (mostly) of words found in one game of Boggle
Commons
The space around pine needles and verbs,
Around an angry moonlit friend
Becomes a mansion.
I swear, this is no conspiracy of cheerfulness,
But I drag the bloody door of myself through
A bigger door again and again.
Burn through me, lemon, ginger.
Sing through me, blasted mosquito.
Inch through me, lover, legion.
This nameless house.
The shoreless common.
There are lockless ways in.
2013
with thanks to TWR for the phrase of the fourth line
Resorption
One does not lay burning things aside.
Like words,
One fire eats another fire, grows,
Wears a robe that cannot clothe but smoke.
Blow the sage and juniper.
Invent purity.
Throw the rice and butter,
All the lumps of sugar in at once.
Pretend we eat.
We’ll still be hungry,
Playing sated
When the coals are cold.
One wind resorbs the forest whole.
You harvest words from flaming bushes,
Feed us to the mirror world.
There you are, again, again,
In photos with black skeletons.
We eat you.
2013
Bright Bowls
My body
A fairy tale
I tell myself
In sinew
Ache
And bloody
Bones.
Your hands
The ink
Translation
I offer
Sentience
In frighteningly
Bright bowls.
2013
Without Water
“We die without water,” Rosemerry read by the river.
But I am not thinking of the fact that, indeed,
If we do not drink water, we will die.
Instead, I am remembering the water
You couldn’t swallow, that dripped off
Your cracked lips. Your cloudy, tearless eyes.
Our quiet mother holding a full glass so near your face.
2013